950116 - On The Town

    The guys are in from San Francisco, so I do battle with automatic ticket reservations. It is my first attempt. The system is a bit like winding your way through Delphi's menus, except the menu is given by voice and you punch the numbers on the phone pad. There are a lot of movies and movie houses in New York and there's no choice of repeating or going back. I get lost immediately, but soon discover punching in impossible numbers gets the dumb thing to go back to the previous menu. I get what I want.

Pick up the guys at their hotel off Times Square and we head north through the theater crowds, checking out the lights and huge billboards. There's nothing like midtown New York when it drizzles, with puddles reflecting the neons and fog hiding the towers, glowing in every color of the rainbow.

At Sony IMax I get on the wrong line and get send to ticket machines lining the wall, stick in my card, punch `picking up tickets' and it spits out four tickets and a receipt. Just like that. Doesn't ask what movie, how many ... just gives me what I ordered, untouched by human hands all the way.

Up an endless escalator and into a starwars hangar, the control room is way up there, a four-story screen in front of us slowly pulses with the same colors reflected in the puddles on Times Square. We adjust our headsets and head off Into The Deep. The water hesitates just at mouth level. There is a collective intake of air. As the water closes up above our heads. I'm looking at a bright-red fish two, four inches in front of my nose. The fish is looking at me. Various sea creatures do battle; it's the normal Nature-type film, but everything in 3D, ultra-real, details galore. Stunning.

The possibilities are endless. I can see the hostess handing out lasers so we can make our choices. My red beam hits an octopus, a tuna and a herring and I get a card when I turn in my headset and pointer. We end the evening in a tatami room - Lenge's Sushi, turn in the card. There's gyoza, beef wrapped around some veggies, shumai and ikura. With just a slight smile, the waiter brings our sashimi. He shows the markings. It is indeed the very octopus, tuna and herring I picked. I nod. Everyone's impressed.